Vulnerable Hit Hardest by Katrina, Study Says

By Elizabeth Mehren, Times Staff Writer

BOSTON ~{!*~} Poor African American residents of New
Orleans were disproportionately displaced by Hurricane Katrina, a study
released Thursday confirmed.

The demographic research by Brown
University sociologist John Logan reinforced anecdotal observations and
media images that showed the city's most socially vulnerable residents
were hit hardest by the Aug. 29 storm and subsequent flooding.

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The
study raised questions about who would be able to return to New Orleans as
it rebuilds. Examining the social differences among the city's 13 planning
districts and 72 neighborhoods, Logan found that New Orleans was at risk
of losing as much as 80% of its black population.

"The suffering
from the storm certainly cut across racial and class lines," Logan said.
"But the odds of living in a damaged area were clearly much greater for
blacks, residents who rented their homes and poor people."

Logan
based his conclusions on a combination of U.S. Census data and disaster
classification information from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
He also analyzed satellite maps of the area and visited New Orleans and
the Gulf Coast last month.

"I had mapped most of these data, and
had an impression about it, but I didn't want to do anything about it
until I had seen it," Logan said.

Despite his familiarity with the
numbers, Logan said, his stay in the storm-ravaged area made a strong
impression: "I have never been in a war zone," he said. "But that analogy
kept coming back to mind."

Logan said he undertook the study
because "I felt compelled on a personal basis to commit some time and
energy to understanding what happened" in the hurricane zone. He found the
damage wrought by Katrina to be a textbook example of how where someone
lives can determine that person's future.

Media reports at the time
of the disaster that depicted an overwhelmingly poor, black population
suffering from Katrina were not distorted, Logan said.

About
one-third of the 1.7 million residents of the region hit by Katrina lived
in areas that sustained flooding or moderate to catastrophic storm damage,
Logan said. His study found that the population in the damaged areas was
45.8% African American, compared with 26.4% in the undamaged
areas.

He said 45.7% of the population in the damaged areas lived
in rental housing, compared with 30.9% in undamaged areas.

In the
damaged areas, 20.9% of the population was living below the poverty line,
compared with 15.3% in the areas that were not damaged.

Pre-Katrina
unemployment was 7.6% in the damaged areas and 6% in undamaged
areas.

The data also showed that the New Orleans areas most
affected by Katrina housed half of the city's white residents and 80% of
its African Americans.

Logan said that decisions not to rebuild in
heavily flooded areas therefore would disproportionately affect black
residents.

"Policy choices affecting who can return to which
neighborhood, and with what forms of public and private assistance, will
greatly affect the future character of the city," Logan wrote in the
study, funded in part by the National Science Foundation.

He
conceded that, in some ways, his investigation confirmed what had seemed
obvious. But, he said, the data would help inform the broad understanding
not merely of Katrina, but of future catastrophes.